Product description

The late medieval eastern Mediterranean, before its incorporation into the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, presents a complex and fragmented picture. The Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates held sway over Egypt and Syria, Asia Minor was divided between a number of Turkish emirates, the Aegean between a host of small Latin states, and the Byzantine Empire was only a fragment of its former size. This collection of thirteen original articles, by both established and younger scholars, seeks to find common themes that unite this disparate world. Focusing on religious identity, cultural exchange, commercial networks, and the construction of political legitimacy among Christians and Muslims in the late Medieval eastern Mediterranean, they discuss and analyse the interaction between these religious cultures and trace processes of change and development within the individual societies. A detailed introduction provides a broad geopolitical context to the contributions and discusses at length the broad themes which unite the articles and which transcend traditional interpretations of the eastern Mediterranean in the later medieval period.

Author information

Eugenia Russell is Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London

Review quote

This is a very good book ... It gives a new and important picture of the eastern Mediterranean in the late medieval period, from 1150 onwards, including revisionist discussions of the rise of the Ottomans and the last period of Byzantium, and it questions recent hypotheses about the role of the Mediterranean in history. Averil Cameron, English Historical Review

Table of contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ; LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS ; NOTE ABOUT TRANSLITERATION ; ABBREVIATIONS ; LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS ; INTRODUCTION ; 1. 'Shared Worlds': Religious Identities - A Question of Evidence ; 2. Imperial Constantinople: Relics, Palaiologan Emperors and the Resilience of the Exemplary Centre ; 3. The Eastern Mediterranean in the Later Middle Ages - An Island World? ; 4. Constantinople as City State, c. 1360-1453 ; 5. Transposed Images: Currencies and Legitimacy in the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean ; 6. Conquest Legitimised: The Making of a Byzantine Emperor in Crusader Constantinople (1204-1261) ; 7. Conquest and Political Legitimation in the Early Ottoman Empire ; 8. Byzantine Authority and Latin Rule in the Gattilusio Lordships ; 9. 'New Wine in Old Skins': Crusading Literature and Crusading in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Later Middle Ages ; 10. Aragon versus Turkey - Tirant lo Blanc and the Conquerer: Iberia, the Crusade and Late Medieval Chivalry ; 11. Palestine in Late Medieval Islamic Spirituality and Culture ; 12. Turks, Mamluks and Latin Merchants: Commerce, Conflictand Co-operation in the Eastern Mediterranean ; 13. Byzantium and the West in the 1360s: the Kydones Version ; INDEX